EXHIBIT: Sharp-suited Man
by shallowness
Summary: Jim is familiar with coming to tied to a chair. Jim Gordon/Lee Thompkins, Ed Nygma/Lee Thompkins. Post 4.22.


Characters/Pairing: Jim Gordon, Lee Thompkins, Ed Nygma, Jim Gordon/Lee Thompkins, Ed Nygma/Lee Thompkins  
Summary: Jim is familiar with coming to tied to a chair.  
Author's Note: Post 4.22. 2,622 words.

 **EXHIBIT: Sharp-suited Man: shallowness**

A flash of light woke Jim up. He was getting too familiar with the sensation of coming to seated, but unable to move because he was tied to a chair.

He automatically tested the restraints and discovered his feet were bound to the legs of the chair, his chest to its back and his hands were tied together behind him. He couldn't move much. Whoever had done this meant business. At the same time, Jim looked around, trying to figure out where the light that had brought him to had come from.

There was some light source behind him, a window, he'd guess, none too clean, grudgingly letting in grey daylight. The last Jim remembered, it had been the beginning of the night shift, although he'd already worked the day shift. But double shifts were standard these days.

He'd been following a hunch that had led him to a chop shop. The last thing he remembered was taking inventory of the cars there, trying to compare them with descriptions of vehicles involved in recent crimes. From the parched state of his mouth and the type of headache he had, Jim was pretty sure he'd been tranquilised and then moved, because this large, empty space wasn't anything like the cramped garage and its unmistakable smell of motor oil.

He grimaced and tried to break the restraints again. You never knew.

As he moved, something nagged at his senses. It was about his suit – it felt, smelled and sounded off.

Jim looked down and, in as much as he could, jumped in his chair. He was wearing a green, shiny suit and tie, the kind that Ed Nygma sported these days. Not only that, but Jim realized he had a hat on his head, contributing to his headache.

He couldn't actually be wearing Ed's suit. As far as he could tell, this one fit him near perfectly. While Jim had been out for the count, someone—Nygma or one of his street kids—had undressed Jim, hopefully no further than his boxers and shirt, and dressed him up. Jim felt a little queasy.

Of course, it could be one of the Riddler's rivals or enemies. There was no giant question mark about, no over-the-top weapon aimed at him, but it wasn't just Jim's gut that told him it had been Ed, it was the fact that whoever had done this had planned for it. They'd got his measurements.

Jim wriggled his toes. He thought he still wore his own shoes. Maybe Nygma hadn't planned for everything. He tried to remember, did the Riddler wear green shoes? Jim doubted it.

Something else occurred to him, something about the dimensions and acoustics of this space, part of what seemed to be an empty warehouse with brick pillars. There was an essence to the air he was breathing in that didn't match the location.

"Who's there?" he called out, remembering the light that had roused him. Bright, sudden, and then cut off. Could have been something automatic, but the space felt bare, hollowed out, and the strip lighting above him was off.

He heard a footstep, and then one of the last people Jim wanted to see him looking like this stepped out of the shadows in front of him. Ed himself was top of the list, followed by all the psychos who would have a good laugh before they proceeded to gut Jim. Lee Thomkins wasn't likely to attack him, but she was holding a phone in her gloved hand. The light was good enough for Jim to see mischief on her face.

"Lee" Jim said, "tell me I'm dreaming."

He had absolutely no belief she'd do so.

She smiled at him, and he got the feeling that she'd been trying not to laugh for the last few minutes, watching him as he realised his situation and tried and failed to do something about it.

"The restraints are real, Jim," she pointed out, slipping her phone in the pocket of her glamorous coat. For some Gothamites, she was still the Queen of the Narrows, so she dressed the part. The Queen had been dead, long live the Queen.

For Jim, she was still Lee, and it was complicated.

"Tell me you did not take a picture of me like this," he ground out.

"What can I say?" she teased. "I couldn't resist it."

She pulled out a knife from the other pocket of her coat. There had been a time when the only knife she'd have ever held was a scalpel, Jim thought, but that was a long while ago. Lee stepped even closer to him, and he wondered how he could have missed her perfume. She started cutting at the restraint around his chest first. Whatever it was made of, it was tight and tough.

"Where is he?" Jim asked.

"Ed? All I can tell you is he's not here," Lee replied. "I don't know where he is. I know he isn't in the Narrows, and neither are we. This is neutral territory."

Jim huffed. Territory didn't stay unclaimed for very long in Gotham these days.

"I don't know his movements anymore," Lee said, still working at the restraint. "We killed each other, remember?"

"Like I said before, don't tell me that."

The restraint broke and Jim found he could breathe easier. The suit and shirt weren't constricting, although he'd like to get the suit off him as quickly as he could too. He turned to look at Lee, who was holding what looked like a strip of plastic. It was green, of course.

"And like I've said to you before, it didn't take, so what crime was committed?" Lee started working on the binding around his wrists. Jim's skin ought to have got hardened, he'd been restrained there often enough. But it was tender and hurting. His shoulders were complaining too.

"So, you don't know what he's up to with this fancy dress get-up for me?" Jim tilted his head forward, feeling the weight of the bowler hat. He didn't want to know what he looked like.

"Stay still," she urged in her doctor voice. "I think it's my fault."

She moved to stand behind Jim. Maybe it was to make it easier to work at the restraint, but maybe it was so that she could avoid looking at him as she spoke. Hearing her voice from behind him just reminded Jim of other situations, times when her voice had been more teasing, seductive even, not wry and business-like, with a trace of guilt to it.

"I may have told him that you two are less different than he thinks."

Jim breathed out of his nose. He felt rather than heard the restraint loosen and fall off his wrists.

"Why would you say something like that?" he asked in his calm voice, bringing his hands in front of him and rubbing each wrist gingerly. He'd suffered worse. He was all too aware that his legs were still tied to the chair legs, meaning he was seated and Lee was standing. Jim couldn't help disliking it.

"There was a substantial amount of evidence at the time," Lee said, coming around to hand him the knife, handle facing him. "The way you both thought you could tell me who I was, for one."

Jim concentrated on bending forward and starting to hack at what seemed to be a lot of plastic binding around his right ankle. He tried not to notice the color of the pants.

"I'm afraid that might have given him the idea for all this."

"Yes, it did," an all too familiar voice said.

Jim looked up and saw a silencer at the end of a gun being held by Ed, who was wearing the same outfit as Jim, except their expressions were nothing alike. Ed had a huge grin on his face. Jim really didn't think he could manage anything other than a grimace.

A knife versus a gun didn't make for great odds.

"Drop the weapon," Ed ordered him nastily.

Jim had to comply. He hadn't managed to free his right leg, and hadn't even started on the other one.

"My people?" Lee asked tightly. Jim didn't dare look at her. The last time he'd interacted with Nygma, he'd been far from stable, and finding Lee here with Jim wasn't likely to calm the guy down.

"My condolences," Ed said in an insincere voice, but although the gun remained trained on Jim, Nygma's eyes were devouring Lee. "I don't remember them from the club. Were they new?"

"You didn't have to kill them."

"Given our relative sizes and fighting prowess, yes, I did," he answered her. "Someone else has the tranq gun, or I might have let them survive.

"Now, am I going to have to get blood all over your nice new suit?" Ed asked Jim, his eyes snapping away from Lee.

"What are you up to, Nygma?" Jim growled.

"I just thought your look needed an update." Ed said. Jim could do nothing but glower, and hope Ed's need to boast would make him tell the truth.

"Do you remember when Harvey Bullock charged in and mistakenly shot a colleague? Sure you do. Well—" Ed gestured with his free hand.

"What in particular have you done for the GCPD to want to shoot you?" Jim asked.

"I'd say it was intentional, but I wouldn't mean it," Ed replied. Jim's headache started worsening.

"An accident," Lee translated.

"Bravo, Lee. Collateral damage, but enough to put your colleagues into a blind rage, Captain Gordon. Time to use you as protection."

Jim didn't want to be Ed's protection. He just wanted out of this green suit. It might as well have been luminous green. He didn't want to be autopsied by Fox while wearing it. But he wasn't sure what he could do to avoid that fate.

Still, he wasn't alone. Lee was an ally. She had come to rescue Jim, and Ed had made a mistake by killing her people. As if she'd come to the same conclusion, Lee leaned forward and took Jim's hat off his head.

"Hmm," she said.

"Don't do that. Put it back," Ed ordered, gesturing with his gun.

"Or what?" she asked. Ed pointed the gun back at Jim, who shifted uncomfortably in his seat. There was the seductive note he remembered in Lee's voice. Jim had tried really hard not to think about Lee and Ed being together, as the other man had boasted about. It made his skin crawl. Whatever Lee was going to do, he hoped it would be over quickly.

"Or you might get shot," Ed rasped out. "Where's your sense of self-preservation?"

"You're not going to shoot me and I'm—"

"The person nearest the window," Ed interrupted her. "Holding a hat. A far too tempting target for a trigger-happy police marksman."

Jim wanted to agree, but he thought Lee was up to something. As slowly as he could, he started straining the leg he'd been working to free, trying to put more pressure on the weakened binding while Lee had Ed's attention. One free leg was better than none.

"You're not going to sacrifice yourself for Jim Gordon, your majesty," Ed said, after taking a long, assessing look at her.

"The Narrows are a part of Gotham," she replied. "He's fighting for Gotham."

"Not the way you wanted. How much do you think he bothers about the Narrows?"

Ed gave up what might have been a staring match between him and Lee.

"Let me simplify matters for you, Lee." The gun shifted slightly, aiming down at Jim's legs instead of his chest. Jim froze, hoping Nygma hadn't noticed what he'd been trying to do.

"Take off the hat and replace it on Gordon's head, or I shoot him where it won't kill him, only hurt him."

Lee's response was to throw the hat at Ed. Jim put even more force into freeing his leg as he heard a supressed gunshot. Jim felt the bullet pass him by. No red stained his green pants. Ed had missed.

Suddenly, there was another, louder gunshot, a clatter of metal, and Lee's voice rang out.

"I can't kill you either, Ed, but I can hit you where it hurts." Jim saw that Ed was clutching at his right arm, both grimacing and grinning. "Step back, Ed. Lie on the ground."

"I have glasses for Gordon in my pocket."

"Lie down," she replied, implacable. Jim winced at the sound of glass cracking as Nygma complied, but more at the thought that Ed had brought along a pair of glasses for him to complete the look.

Lee walked toward the knife, kicking it at Jim. She then picked up the gun Ed had been carrying. Jim took a long, impressed look at her, a woman of steel, before grabbing the knife and resuming his task of freeing himself, so he could take a gun and the job of guarding Ed, which would allow Lee to go check on her people. Ed could have been lying about killing them, but nobody had shouted out after the gunfire or come in to see what had happened.

As soon as he could stand, Lee handed Jim Ed's gun, and, one-handed, Jim undid his jacket, not caring if he'd be cold, then removed it. The less of a target he made of himself, the better

Later that morning, instead of writing a report, a task Jim was starting to avoid, because they all read like he'd been breathing in some hallucinatory gas even when he hadn't, Jim burned the green suit in an oil drum at the back of the station. Presumably, the other, blood-stained green suit had been taken off Nygma by now, replaced by whatever Arkham's inmates wore these days.

Lee had had a gun of her own stowed on her, but Jim hadn't had a reason to book her for it. She hadn't tried to kill Ed, either because Jim would have arrested her if she had, or for another reason of her own. Nobody could argue that she hadn't used reasonable force to subdue Ed. Gotham's finest would have gone much bigger. Jim had learned that Nygma's collateral damage had been Detective Shan's fiancée.

Jim stared at the flames eating up the suit, thinking about the conversation he'd had with Lee when she'd returned after confirming her guards were dead.

"Thank you for rescuing me," he'd said.

"Again," she'd said. "It's getting to be a habit."

"If I asked really nicely, would you delete the picture from your phone?" he asked.

"Never," she answered, almost sounding like herself, but she wouldn't look at the so-called Riddler, lying on the ground, clutching at his wound. "I meant what I said about fighting for Gotham. For all of it."

"I try."

"I know." She looked at him, long and hard; he looked back, all the things they'd said to each other over the years in that look. "I'll call someone and they'll let the GCPD know where you are," she said and walked away.

Nygma hadn't mentioned her and nobody in the GCPD cared, officially, what Jim had had to do to bag Nygma. Unofficially, he knew some people were disappointed that the gunshot wound hadn't been somewhere more fatal. Nygma had been taken out of the warehouse none too gently, while Jim had put on a GCPD jacket with relief.

Now, the suit he'd woken up in was nothing but ashes. Jim would keep Lee's name out of the paperwork. If Nygma did mention her in an interview, he'd put it down to his obsession with her. Nodding at his decision, Jim went back to work.


End file.
